I. Field
The present disclosure relates generally to communication, and more specifically to techniques for selecting a serving base station.
II. Background
Wireless communication systems are widely deployed to provide various communication services such as voice, video, packet data, broadcast, messaging, and so on. These systems may be multiple-access systems capable of supporting communication for multiple terminals by sharing the available system resources. Examples of such multiple-access systems include Code Division Multiple Access (CDMA) systems, Time Division Multiple Access (TDMA) systems, Frequency Division Multiple Access (FDMA) systems, and Orthogonal Frequency Division Multiple Access (OFDMA) systems.
A multiple-access system typically utilizes a multiplexing scheme to support transmissions for multiple terminals on each of the forward and reverse links. The forward link (or downlink) refers to the communication link from the base stations to the terminals, and the reverse link (or uplink) refers to the communication link from the terminals to the base stations. On the reverse link, a transmission from a terminal may be received by one or more base stations. Each base station may observe different channel conditions for the terminal and may thus receive the transmission with different received signal quality. Improved performance as well as better utilization of the available system resources may be achieved by selecting an appropriate base station to serve the terminal on the reverse link.
There is therefore a need in the art for techniques to select a serving base station for a terminal in a wireless communication system.